Graffiti – art or annoyance?

1 May 2015

You’ve seen it scribbled on walls and on the tops of buildings. It litters underpasses and railway stations, swarming into your peripheral vision like an invading force – but is graffiti an art form?

In local council boards and in broadsheet newspapers, it’s a question that’s being fiercely debated. Are these intermittent sprays of paint nothing more than a nuisance?

Naturally, most have-a-go Banksys would argue that their hobby is a viable medium of self-expression. Their spray paint cans are their palette and the walls of underpasses their broad urban canvas. Many might even see themselves as Zorro-types, rebelliously making their mark to brighten up an otherwise dull slab of architecture.

The rebels of ‘art’

One such graffiti rebel is Andre Saraiva, a world-renowned artist who recently sprayed some tags on stones in America’s Joshua Tree National Park. The dilemma for the local authorities is clear – do they destroy a unique work of art or allow their national heritage to be scrawled on without punishment?

For the District Courts in Los Angeles the solution was clear – on April 1st 2015, they fined Saraiva $275 and moved on with their lives. But other works still spark debate across the UK.

What do you do with Banksy’s latest works, or a reimagining of the Mona Lisa on the side of a bus stop? Where does art end and graffiti begin?

For most local councils the answer is simple – it it’s defacing public property, it’s the work of a vandal.

And a simple clean-up could cost taxpayers thousands of pounds.

With us, however, graffiti removal is a simple operation. Using EcoBlasting technology, we’ll remove paint from walls with minimal fuss.